783 



398. Note on the Second Flowering of a Horsechesnut Tree. There 

 is a fine horsechesnut tree standing in a garden at the corner of the 

 .Lyndhurst road, in Peckham. This tree is remarkable for a propen- 

 sity to blossom early in the spring ; it is invariably the earliest in the 

 neighbourhood, both as regards leaves and flowers, and is an object 

 of admiration to our residents, as well as to the gentle race of citizens 

 w'ho disport themselves in our atmosphere on Sundays, This year its 

 leafy and flowery honours were nipped by an untimely frost ; they 

 became brown and shrivelled, and the tree remained throughout the 

 summer months a most unsightly object, while its more prudent neigh- 

 bours were quite uninjured. In September new buds made their ap- 

 pearance, sent forth new leaves, and new spikes of beautiful flowers. 

 On the 1st of October the tree was clothed in a robe of bloom, and 

 since then J have daily walked through the fallen flowers which strew 

 the footway beneath its branches. — Edward Newman : Hanover St., 

 Peckham J October 25, 1843. 



Art. CLXXIX. — Proceedings of Societies. 



BOTANICAL SOCIETY OF LONDON. 



October 6, 1843. — John Reynolds, Esq., Treasurer, in the chair. 



Donations to the library were announced from Dr. Goodfellow, Messrs. Quekett, 

 Woodward, and Rich, and the Microscopical Society. British Plants had been re- 

 ceived from the PresideYit and Miss M. Beever, and a very large collection of East- 

 Indian Plants, many of them collected by Dr. Wight, were presented by the Royal 

 Horticultural Society of Cornwall. 



Mr. Adam Gerard exhibited a collection of Fruits and Seeds from Sierra Leone, 

 containing specimens of the fruits of the butter and tallow tree {Pentadesma butyracea). 



Read, " Notes of a Botanical Excursion to Tilgate Forest in August last," by John 

 Reynolds, Esq., Treasurer. — G. E. D. 



MICROSCOPICAL SOCIETY OF LONDON. 



October 18, 1843.— J. S. Bowerbank, Esq., F.R.S., in the chair. 



Read, a paper by Edwin J. Quekett, Esq., on " An Instance of Monstrosity in a 

 Moss." After some observations on the well-known fact that the several organs which 

 constitute the flower and fruit of a plant are only modifications of leaves, and also on 

 the formation of double flowers by the conversion of the parts of reproduction into 

 petals, Mr. Quekett stated that although instances of these changes were extremely 

 common m flowering plants, they are but rarely met with among those which arefloiv- 

 erless ; still, however, they do occur sufiiciently often in the latter, to prove that the 

 same law which operates in the former instances, u' taius aho in some of the higher 



